Smiling Death In The Face: Share A Bottle?
by Apollo Wings - KnaveOfAngst
Summary: Book 1: Ejya Rendkett is Fateless and slightly unhinged from waking up dead with this predicament hanging over her shoulders. Agarth Hiscbus is just drunk. Together an old legend and an odd mage are deciding Fate together, drinking and smiling along the way.


Author Note: What's this? Apollo Wings NOT writing Dragon Age? Has the world gone insane! Why yes it has! Come one and all, enjoy the short story!

**Disclaimer: Owned by Big Huge Games/EA/30 Studios/RA Salvatore/Todd McFarlane/Ken Rolston - all characters are based upon their intellectual property. No monies was expected or received for this story.**

* * *

All in all, it had been an uneventful day for the Fateweaver. Except for the abysmal cards this morning. He was enjoying the sunshine though.

Maybe it was all a pack of lies, his foresight, his death... maybe he could defy his Fate? Then again, why would every other Fate he'd read be true if his own was not? Coincidences didn't happen like that and many people HAD read his Fate. So he sat in the sunshine, the grasses around Gorhart were quite dewy but he didn't mind the wetness on his chausses.

The ale was good too. He would never complain when it was this good, maybe it was because he was finally forgetting that awful set of cards.

Gravedigger.

Back again! Belen had finally come for him but he just didn't want to think about it all, he knew today would be the start of the end of his life. The day he'd told the little ginger-headed gnome Fomourous Hugues that he'd die. Fate, thou curse'd bitch.

Agarth took another swig of the bottle, glancing up at the rising sun over the chalky topped hills that surrounded him in his lonesome stupor. He thought King Titarion was offering a reward in some respects when he gave him the title of knight for defeating the Dream-Eater of Amaura but he'd seen it as a waste. The Fateweavers _knew_ they knew when someone would die, when they'd fall in love. They knew it all and he only saw power in that over fancy titles.

He regretted hanging up his sword, taking all his wealth and titles and throwing it back in the faces of those he'd protected when he joined the Featweavers. The day he'd seen his own death. Agarth shivered once more, reaching for the surprisingly empty bottle by his knee. Without even thinking about it he reached for another and pulled the cork out with his teeth, spitting it as far as it would go.

No hero would ever find him here. So _pfft_ to them. Har har, so many had tried but did they ever think just sitting down, having a drink and being generally inconspicuous might work nicely?

He must have dozed off because the next thing Agarth was aware of was an almightly explosion. He looked uneasily into the sky, slicking back the his hair that had been mussed in the grass as he slept. Vraekor preserve him, but what in hells bells had that been.

The queasy remembrance of his cards this morning shifted through the fog of his mind. Fomourous Hugues. Tough little guy, went down laughing... and owning him a fair amount. Agarth wiped a tear from under his eye, he thought it might be for someone he could call friend even in his lowest ebb, it might have been in part for himself. Fate had decreed his death wouldn't be too long now. Whatever he did, this damned hero would find him...

With a fleeting sense that there might never be any turning back when he'd stood up, Agarth picked up Dragonfang, sheathing the large sword in the sheath on his back. Did it have to feel so damned heavy today... of all days? One couldn't keep Fate waiting after all.

* * *

The woman was definitely not what he expected. Not in the slightest bit. Agarth kept back, wondering if he really had drunk that much or if this really was the case that things were... different to that how it had been foretold. He put a hand up to his face, breathing into the leather palm of his gauntlet and taking a wary sniff.

Almost immediately the sour yeast of strong ale hit him and the crease between his brows sprang apart with the shock splaying over his face. It wasn't as nearly as strong as he thought it would have been though. Agarth rubbed his eyes and pushed himself into the pillar, trying to remain inconspicuous.

"Thyrdon's Arse! You're going to pay for this Tuatha!" The Varani woman hissed, throwing fire from a splintered, glowing staff at the bleeding Fae of the Winter Court, burning and cauterising the wound at his neck before she twirled the stave and whacked him under the chin with the end and slung it onto a loop on her back. Magic, not a common gift of the Varani peoples where most were stealthy fighters, all finesse of muscle and cunning rather than of the mind.

He felt his mouth go abominably dry as he watched her lean over her kills, rifling through the pockets like a raider of old. She definitely was Varani, he should know. Agarth was Varani too! But how to approach her? "You can come out now. I don't bite... hard anyway." She sniffed. He was taken aback, cursing himself and wondered exactly how he'd explain spying on the mage woman when he had a perfectly serviceable weapon of his own. "For the love of Lupoku just introduce yourself."

Agarth felt like a very novice fighter for the Forsworn being dragged infront of one of the Masters of Arms as he slipped from the stark shadows of the pillar in the early afternoon sun. "I apologise for not helping."

"My kills, my prizes. So don't think you get a single coin off these." She gestured a icy-blonde head towards the cooling Fae on the floor. It wasn't harsh though, she didn't need to be, not when he'd seen how easy she could have added his body to the pile she'd made.

"Perish the thought." He chuckled hesitantly, cursing his earlier curiosity and cowardice. "Although you wouldn't indulge an old Fateweaver would you?"

The woman smirked, wiping a bloody hand on a length of tatty tunic poking from under threadbare robes before presenting it formally. Despite her skills, she wasn't well equipped and that made her scarier if he was honest. "Eyja Rendkett, formerly Captain Eyja of the Varani armies until an... accident shall we say." The smile turned uneasy.

"Worried I might read your death Captain?" He chuckled, finding himself well at ease with shaking her hand in the blood stained circumstances. Her hands were hard with magical calluses beneath the fingerless gloves she wore. "Lupoku's Cheeks, you'd think you'd never heard it before."

Eyja shrugged ill-at-ease. "What can I say? I prefer Fate to be a surprise in some respects. So come on then old Fateweaver, I'm supposed to find one of your lot anyway."

"Oh? By whom?" Agarth asked out of genuine peaked nosiness. The Varani Captain snorted, looking toward the heavens with dangerous eyes. She gestured towards the copse of trees by the shallow river with one hand, sauntering with the air of someone used to their power before taking a crouch and starting to roll her sleeves up, washing away old dirt and blood.

"Fomourous Hugues, he was this..."

"Visionary, dedicated, genius gnome with whiskery ginger hair and thick glasses?" Agarth said quietly, wondering to himself what he'd said that for. Honestly, he was wasting time talking to the woman but when this warrior hero came dashing though he'd start following him. Maybe Eyja would follow too, she seemed alright company so far.

"Last I saw him he was running through a group of Tuatha and going for the hamstrings with a meat cleaver," Eyja laughed mirthlessly, scrubbing harder at a crumpled burn on her skin until her healing magic had rubbed the wound away. She rinsed her wrist in the cool water of the stream. "He looked happy about it though. How did you know him then Fateweaver?"

"I told him when he'd die. The same day his greatest invention was a success." Agarth smiled weakly, watching the ripples of the water and hoping for a spare bottle of ale. Eyja looked interested so he continued. "But where are my manners? Agarth Hiscbur, Fateweaver and former legend at your service."

Her eyes widened. "Agarth, the Blade of Avgruun? Thyrdon's Arse, I'd heard you'd joined the Fateweavers but I hadn't thought you had! Nobody believed it! You inspired me to join the army myself!" She blushed, her lightly tanned cheeks going scarlet. "Agarth is a common enough Varani name. However, Fomourous told me to find you specifically."

"Could it be Fate?" He joked, the realisation was dawning on him. He hated to think that his death was so soon but everyone had an expiration date as it were. That it was so soon still unsettling.

"You're the Fateweaver, you tell me my good sir!" Eyja chuckled lightly, closing her eyes and remaining quite still, heartbeat slowing and breathing becoming steady for a proper reading. He put his cards onto the floor, laying each wherever he wished it. Agarth carefully put his hands out, ghosting them down her wide shoulders. He reached out for the threads of Fate around her, trying to get them to guide his hands.

A wrinkle formed between his brows again. "I... I..."

"Can you hear that? More Tuatha." Eyja was on her feet in an instant, her staff coming with more than practised ease from the loop on her back. Lightning formed in her palms as the first bluish skinned Fae careened down the ledge leading to the shallow stream, the Varani woman leaned back into a tree and kicked him in places no man wanted to be kicked, lightning shooting from him like an unholy conduit to his fellows further behind him.

He keeled down, straining to move properly when Agarth, still taken aback by the unorthodox mage's fighting style was confused more than anything. The world seemed to slow down and everything took on the hue of Fate itself, a deep, clear purple.

Eyja was moving so fast, whacking her staff around the heads of the Tuatha at impossible speeds until halos of fire and lightning fizzed in the air over the Fae's heads, it sped up suddenly and the very blunt end of her stave was stuck in the eyesocket of the first Tuatha that had slipped down the ledge. "Lopoku's Cheeks how much did I drink today?" Was the only sentence that seemed to form properly on in his mouth. He could still taste the _purple_ of all things, his skin felt numb and magic touched, a blast of warmer air surrounded him.

"I have no idea but I don't think I've had enough Fateweaver." The Varani mage uttered, dropping her staff to the ground.

"That was pure Fate! The wefts of Fate! I saw you moving on them! I saw you moulding them!" He grit his teeth, eyes widening. "How in Belen's name was that even possible?"

"I thought Fateweavers, you know, weaved the Fates?" Eyja choked. "Maybe I'm a Fateweaver too?"

"No. No, Fateweavers, despite the name just read it. We feel the Fates and they guide our hands to the right cards to read it in our language. This... that wasn't Fateweaving like I've ever seen." Agarth looked down in time to see his cards had been crushed into the grassy sod of the bank during that strange occurrence, he felt no inclination to be upset over it.

"Did you see my death before that then? Maybe I'd like to know what you saw." She looked up, a hopeful smile lifting her features.

"What if I told you Eyja that... I saw no Fate whatsoever? That you're... the master of your own Fate?" Agarth swallowed thickly. It didn't make sense, even saying it aloud. Everyone knew Fate decreed everything someone did. That's how Fateweavers existed!

"I died against the Tuatha far away, during the Crystal Wars. Fomourous Hugues brought me back to life in his Well of Souls," Eyja choked out. She looked up, pleading in her golden eyes now. "Could that mean anything? Tell me! You have to know!"

Agarth took another step backwards, his foot hitting his pack which must have slipped from his shoulder during the literal Fate Weaving. The clink of glass brought him back to Amalur with a heavy thud of reality. "I'm drunk, the Tuatha are up to something and I'm not the... I'm not the best Fateweaver either. Tell you what. I'll take you to my friend Arden, there isn't a Fateweaver more skilled than he. But he lives in Yolven." _I've finally gone mad. All that drink finally caught up with me._

Eyja swallowed a lump in her throat and stood up straight, features becoming bright again. "Well, I'm obviously very special if the great Blade of Avgruum can't read my Fate. I saw a signpost for the Gorhart Inn half a mile back to the west. I think if we dawdle we should get a room, then we travel to Yolven come morning?"

"That, that sounds like it's for the best." He nodded, numbly walking alongside the strange Varani mage his cards hastily picked up and wiped clean on the least bloodied Tuatha underpadding. He passed a bottle of his ale over to the woman, his arm shaking.

"You said you're too sober?" He half-smiled.

The Late Captain Eyja Rendkett, Varani mage and apparently Fateless woman grinned widely, sticking a long thumbnail into the cork and popping it loudly out. She took a long swig wordlessly, passing it back to him with a grimace on her broad features. "Thyrdon's Arse, you were drunk."

"Does that mean no adventuring, passing up an oppurtunity to go on a quest alongside your childhood hero?" He jabbed, gulping down mouthful over mouthful of the rough ale himself. Agarth snorted into the bottleneck when she stood there, eyebrows raised and playful smirk on her lips.

"Childhood hero? What do you take me for? I've been a Captain twelve years! It was only two years into my army career you disappeared off the face of Amalur. Child indeed." She smiled, plucking the wet bottle of ale out of his hands, taking a rather painful drink.

* * *

That night, a room rented in Gorhart Inn, Agarth sat on the rug by the hearth, the stars out and his new travelling companion lightly snoring on her bed. He arranged his cards out and let himself go into the trance of a Fateweaver reading his own Fate.

What he got was the same. An Ettin giant smashed his chest in, he was breathing blood from his lips, Dragonfang was loose in his grip.

What happened to be different about it though was the woman standing over the dead Ettin's corpse, putting Chakrams onto hooks on the back of fine mage armour. She was smiling despite the black and purple bruise covering most of her face... that is until her gaze dropped down onto his form.


End file.
